An Analysis Of The Regular Phonetic Errors Made By The Sri Lankans In Learning Chinese And Teaching Strategy

This paper analyzed the errors made by Sri Lankan students in learningChinese phonetics in detail. It is expounded from three aspects, consonants, vowelsand tones that Sri Lankan students are affected by the positive and negative transferof mother tongue when learning Chinese phonetics.When Sri Lankan students study Chinese initial consonants, the bias are mainlyconcentrated in five aspects.1. Confusion of the aspirated and the unaspiratedsounds. Both in Chinese and Sinhala there is the opposing of the aspirated and theunaspirated sounds. But Chinese aspirates are between Chinese unaspirated soundsand strong Sinhala aspirates, which leads to the mistakes that students prounces theaspirates to the unaspirated sounds.2. Confusion of the voiced consonants andvoiceless consonants. There is no opposing of the voiced consonants and voicelessconsonants in Chinese (the only4voiced consonants are the twang, the lateral, andthe turbidity, others are voiceless consonants). In Sinhala there is the opposing ofthe voiced consonants and voiceless consonants. Students easily misread theunaspirated voiceless consonants into voiced consonants3. Confusion of theposition of the tip of the tongue (the front, middle and back of the tip of the tongue).T and d in Sinhala are dentalized and apical consonant. The position of thepronunciation is in front of the Chinese t and d. So students often misread by theaffection of the negative transfer of mother tongue.4. Replace coronal consonantswith apical consonants. There is no coronal consonant in Sinhala but in Chinese.When prouncing Chinese coronal consonants j, q, x, Sri Lankan students use apicalconsonants instead of coronal consonants.5. Confusion of the affricate and thefricative. Sri Lankan students are not clear about the principles of affricate and the fricative, which leads to the confusion of the three groups, j, q, x, z, c, s and zh, ch,sh.When learning Chinese vowels, errors are mainly concentrated in two aspects.One is Chinese vowel pronunciation variants are not clearly marked and the other isthe misreading by abbreviation rules of "Chinese pinyin program", especially on themisusing of Chinese vowels I and ü.In terms of tones, this paper mainly studies on the bias of the four tones inChinese. When Sri Lankan students read Chinese tones, it is characterized by lowpitch and short timbre. Studies have shown that the order from hard to easy for SriLankan students is the3rd tone, the2nd tone, the4th tone and the1st tone. The1sttone is the easiest tone and the3rd tone is the most difficult. The reason is that thereis no tone in Sinhala. Students are accustomed to the wavy reading tone, and applyinto the reading of Chinese tones.